Hold the phone here, folks. This thread was started by someone who bemoaned the "gaps" today's children have in their cultural knowledge. And many have responded with what I would call a very predictable old fogey response.

It appears that some here are operating under some false assumptions about what is and is not being taught in the school curriculum nowadays. The curriculum taught is variable of course (ie accounts for district by district, state by state curriculum requirements, as well as for children's varied skill levels), but is still very much dominated by an Anglocentric canon. Shakespeare and Homer are still cornerstones of the humanities curriculums in high schools across the US. So are the Federalist Papers and the historic contexts of Manifest Destiny. But European folk and fairy tales are no longer the only ones being taught in the schools. And it is through their exposure to the literature (both oral and written) of other cultures, that kids begin to learn about the many cultures they will encounter in their global villages as adults.

So yes, there has been a certain amount of the Anglocentric canon sacrificed, because there just isn't time for teachers to include all of what we were taught, with all that needs to be taught to today's kids. I think that educators have gotten it as right as they can, considering how shallow their own educations were in this regard. Many will still revert to teaching the Anglo canon, claiming it is the "best" example of a folk tale, myth, or version of history. They do this for a lot of reasons, some of which include insecurity about the multi-cultural canon, or arrogance about the Anglo canon, or resistance to learning anything new themselves to update their lesson plans, or cynical laziness--a terrible problem among today's teachers.

In the last thirty or so years, some educators have struggled to broaden the curriculum to fit their students needs to become literate and informed about the vast, rich history and literature beyond the Anglo world. That is the world our children will inherit--a complex, global world where the English language, the Anglo canon, and an Anglo and Anglo American view of history isn't the only world view being taught. Our future generations will be encountering people with dramatically different cultural ways of experiencing and knowing the world on a daily basis. If our children know nothing about non-English speaking people, their histories, their literatures--how will we have equipped them to deal with their world? We need to move beyond this terrible "kill and conquer the enemy" mentality have (especially in the wake of 9/11) about people and cultures from Spanish speaking, Chinese speaking, Arabic speaking, Hindi speaking, etc. parts of the world. There are many more of them than there are of us--English speakers dominate today's world militarily and economically, but not linguistically and culturally. Yet.

Personally, I love Louisa May Alcott. She was an important author for me to read as a teenager, especially as a role model in a world where there weren't many strong women. So you can imagine what a shock it was for me to find out as an adult, that even for all her passion for the cause of the emancipation of blacks, she also was terribly prejudiced when it came to Native Americans and the Irish. I wasn't taught that in high school, but now children reading her works are--sometimes. But only if they are being taught by excellent teachers, who will gently guide their students through the 19th century American writers like Hawthorne, Twain, Whitman, Dickinson, Alcott, Thoreau, etc who point out the prejudices of their day all these writers succumbed to in varying degrees. When children are taught this, they are learning skills which make it easier to identify such prejudices in themselves and in their culture--an important survival skill in today's world.

I know the same thing is happening in other English speaking parts of the world, with the same sort of backlash against a broadened curriculum we see here. But I don't view the development of a more inclusive multi-cultural curriculum negatively at all. I think that in the long run, if we survive the military madness which has gripped this planet since the dawn of the industrial age, we will find a way to live in peace with one another on this planet--but only if we dare educate ourselves about one another. If we just keep educating children to know our own past, rather than educating them about the great and terrible past of other people who inhabit this earth with us, how will we ever make this world a decent place to inherit in the future?

Long, rambling thoughts...sorry this isn't more coherent. But it has been an extremely long week in the urban high school trenches. Which I wouldn't trade for a million dollar paycheck, BTW.